Startled by a terrible suspicion, her grandmother looked at her in dismay. Erika's face was turned away from her.
"Well?" asked the old Countess.
"I wrote to him yesterday," poor Erika stammered, "telling him what I was about to do. I thought he must hear of it sooner or later, and I wished that he should hear it in a way that would give him least pain."
"Oh, Erika! Erika!"
But Erika lay still, her head turned away from her grandmother. After a while she said, almost in a whisper, "Grandmother, please write to him that"--she buried her face in the pillow--"that---- Oh, grandmother, tell him--that--he need not despise me!"
Her grandmother made no reply. For a while absolute silence reigned in the room. Then Erika suddenly heard a low sob. She looked round. The Countess had covered her face with her hands, and was weeping.
It was the first time since Erika had known her that she had seen her shed tears.
CHAPTER XXVII.
No trace of spring can be seen. The garden of the Hôtel Britannia is a sunburned desert, where the rose-bushes show withered leaves and not a single bud. The breath of the yellowish-gray lagoons is stifling. All is limp and faded,--both vegetation and human beings. The hotels are emptying: the season here is over, and the season for the watering-places not yet begun. Moreover, there is in Venice an epidemic of typhus fever.
Scarcely half a dozen people assemble every evening at the table-d'hôte of the Hôtel Britannia, and the small table appropriated to the Lenzdorffs in the far corner of the dining-hall is deserted.